New badge discussion
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I’m not pissed off (well, I am. But that’s a different story), but it’s nice of you to be so concerned. And it’s not my favourite game. I also highly doubt that 100% would be as grindy as 120 awards in Zilch. Isn’t one of the Zilch awards for completing 1000 games? I actually prefer Zilch as a game, in fact it used to actually be on my favourites, but I see nothing even remotely that grindy in Rogue Soul.

No, there’s two things here that bother me: 1) the fact that now there’s actually a badge for getting 85% in something, when there could have been a badge for 100%. 85% isn’t an achievement, it isn’t even a milestone. It is a number of no significance whatsoever. It feels very arbitrary. 2) I worry that there will never be another impossible badge.

I’m pretty sure that most of the Impossibles are viewed as a mistake, part of the learning curve (like what greg went through at first). I don’t think this is a sign of Impossibles never happening again, just being fewer and more quality. I don’t think the original intention was for them to be as common as they had become.

The medium for Rogue Soul is relatively difficult for a medium. It took me a bit over 2 hours to get. Since this game loops the same few screens over and over, it just comes down to memorization. When I got 5k, I had only gotten part way through zone 5.

You get better and better as you go. I didn’t break 5k until yesterday, and now I’ve done it I think 4 different times since then.

Zone 6 sucks though, Pixel perfect jumping is never ever ever a good game mechanic.

I’m pretty sure that most of the Impossibles are viewed as a mistake, part of the learning curve (like what greg went through at first). I don’t think this is a sign of Impossibles never happening again, just being fewer and more quality. I don’t think the original intention was for them to be as common as they had become.

They were never “common”—and now they’re rarer than an act of Congress.

I’ve always felt that either impossible badges should be at least 5% of all badges on Kong (currently ~110), or they should be removed entirely. And as LouWeed noted, Kong appears to be moving in the direction of the latter. As it is, maybe 20% of the games that deserve impossible badges actually get them—where’s the fairness in that?

We’ve never felt that there’s a quota for impossible badges (and I know it shows!) because we’d rather have a lack of them than have a saturation of badges that aren’t fun. There’s really only one game that I kind of regret not putting an impossible on (Diamond Hollow 2), but more-often-than-not we get an overwhelmingly negative response to impossible badges by the majority of players on the site, so it’s really better to err on the side of too few impossibles than more bad ones. That said, I really really really love good impossible badges and keep the possibility of one in mind with pretty much every game I look at for badges.

Regarding Rogue Soul specifically, 85% was a pretty arbitrary number. I wanted you to have to complete most things, but not necessarily complete the most annoying ones. I think 100% wouldn’t have really been fantastic impossible material (there’s some element of a grind to it, at least possibly depending on which missions you finish last) and the difficulty doesn’t seem to be high compared to the time investment. So then I was left with either doing a hard for 100% (which I decided was on the hard end, even for a hard) or tone it down a little so you can pick and choose the loot you get to some extent while still having to experience most of the game (you still have to do fairly well in all the challenges and complete a majority of the missions). I ended up with feeling better about a toned-down badge rather than one that felt too exhausting to complete, even if it would have felt more ‘correct’ or ‘complete’ to actually 100% the game.

There have been a fair number of times that Greg and I have taken this approach, and sometimes when we wish we had instead of requiring 100% of something. I think this one calls attention to itself because it feels like you guys are losing out on an impossible badge because of the decision, but we do it more often than you probably notice.

I don’t really get this huge bandwagonning for this game to be an impossible. Did I miss an underground club meeting or something where everyone voted on supporting this? I cannot remember the last time I saw so much support for an impossible badge.

Sounds like raw felt the same as I did. I still like my suggestion of 80% since it’s a round number. Odd numbers are weird.

Having collected 100% loot myself, I think that isn’t really worth an impossible, but it’s surely harder than your average hard. IMO getting all gold/platinum medals from challenge mode would make a better hard badge, as it would seem less arbitrary than getting 85% loot.

Oh well. Those 5-10 people can have their free impossible. It’s not ideal, but it’s definitely not a big enough deal to prevent the badge from happening now that the exploit has been patched.

(Don’t worry ; they’re never, never happy with your decisions. When we don’t have impossible badges, it’s a shame and sad story. When we have a new impossible badge, it is a stupid idea because it could have been a better badge for another game.)

Oh well. Those 5-10 people can have their free impossible. It’s not ideal, but it’s definitely not a big enough deal to prevent the badge from happening now that the exploit has been patched.

(Don’t worry ; they’re never, never happy with your decisions. When we don’t have impossible badges, it’s a shame and sad story. When we have a new impossible badge, it is a stupid idea because it could have been a better badge for another game.)

Yay a new impossible. Should it have been on Rogue Soul? Maybe, though having played the game a bit more, 100% seems a little easy (especially when you figure out what “near of the sign” is supposed to mean). Perhaps 100% combined with challenge scores….anyway, I think the new impossible’s great. Best badge in a while.

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